Harry Mount

Mirabile dictu, as we Latin lovers like to say. In other words, wonderful news! Attractive women have fallen for ancient Rome – and for classicists. Well, that’s what the British Museum thought when it cooked up its advertising campaign for its new show, Legion: Life in the Roman Army, about Roman legionaries. The Museum put up a controversial social media post, promoting the exhibition as an opportunity for single women to find single men. I spotted a lissom blonde in green T-shirt and tie-dye trousers. We fell in step as we approached the gift shop The post read: ‘Girlies, if you’re single and looking for a man, this is your sign to go to the British Museum’s new exhibition, Life in the Roman Army, and walk around looking confused. You’re welcome x.

Barry Humphries would have been 90 on 17 February. To commemorate his life, Radio 4 is broadcasting Barry Humphries: Gloriously Uncut that evening. For the programme, I recalled the joy of talking to Barry about the column he wrote for the Oldie. What a delight, too, it was to hear from the great diplomat Sir Les Patterson on everything from Australian politics to the history of lesbianism: ‘A lot of high-achieving Sheilas – like Cleopatra, Mary Queen of Scots, Boadicea, Dusty Springfield and Florence Nightingale – all paddled the pink canoe at some stage of the game.’ One day, he asked my colleague Penny about me. On hearing I wasn’t married, he said, deadpan, ‘Is he a vagina-decliner?’ Barry had immaculate manners and so asked Penny not to pass on the question.

Over the heather the wet wind blows, I’ve lice in my tunic and a cold in my nose. The rain comes pattering out of the sky, I’m a Wall soldier, I don’t know why. The mist creeps over the hard grey stone, My girl’s in Tungria; I sleep alone. W.H. Auden was right. Life for a Roman legionary on Hadrian’s Wall was bloody miserable. The Vindolanda letters sent to and from legionaries living near the wall – on show in a new British Museum exhibition – chime with Auden’s lines in ‘Roman Wall Blues’. The Romans hated the English weather. In one letter found at Vindolanda fort, near Hexham, Northumberland, a legionary hears about some prized woollen underpants.

It’s amazing how quickly you become ancient history. Thirty years after I left Oxford, my old college, Magdalen – alma mater of Oscar Wilde, Edward VIII and my fellow undergraduate George Osborne – sent out a request to former students. The college archivist asked for ‘Academic work. Records of student societies. College magazines and newsletters. Posters and programmes. Menus and tickets. We need them.’ Hard-copy memories have been increasingly replaced by digital records, as the British Library has discovered to its cost. It has just suffered a ransomware attack, paralysing its online systems. The library’s curator of digital publications, Giulia Carla Rossi, is concerned about the fragility of digital publications.

Throw him to the lions! That’s what I thought when I saw the video of a grinning moron desecrating the walls of the Colosseum with the words ‘Ivan + Hayley 23’. He must have been referring to his girlfriend, standing by his side – and the year. It wasn’t just the fact that he’d defaced the greatest of all Roman buildings. It was that he’d written something so depressingly banal. He could at least have written the year in Roman numerals – MMXXIII. And he could have borrowed some themes from the Romans – the rudest graffiti artists ever. ‘Ivan’ could at least have borrowed some themes from the Romans – the rudest graffiti artists ever We like to think of the Romans as highfalutin, high-minded gods. But they swore like us. They were obsessed with sex, like us.